If you are unable to attend, please consider Supporting a Student to attend the dinner or supporting the Storytelling Festival with a donation. For ticket information or to make a donation, please contact: Jason Brennan, (204) 474-7273, Jason.Brennan@umanitoba.ca

Award Recipient and Guest Speaker Pinchas Gutter

Born into a well established family, who can trace their roots back 400 years in Poland, Pinchas Gutter was born in Lodz and was 7 years old when the war broke out. He, along with his twin sister and entire family fled to what they thought was safety in Warsaw after his father had been brutally beaten by Nazis in Lodz. Pinchas and his family were incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto for three and a half years until April 1943, the time of the Ghetto uprising.

Although the effort was a valiant one, after three weeks the family was deported to the death camp, Majdanek. The day the family arrived after a horrendous journey, Pinchas' father, mother and twin sister were murdered by the Nazis. Pinchas was sent to a work camp where people were beaten, shot or worked to death. He passed through several other concentration camps, including Buchenwald, and worked at loading and unloading enormous weights of iron and other slave work.

Towards the end of the war he was forced on a death march from Germany to Therenstadt in Czechoslovakia which he barely survived. He was liberated by the Russians on 8th May 1945 and under the auspices of UNRRA was taken to Britain with other children for rehabilitation. After spending many years in South Africa he emigrated to Canada where he resides. Pinchas divides his time between speaking out against the Holocaust, volunteering as a chaplain and is an honourary full time Cantor in the Kiever Shul.

Pinchas Gutter has been a dedicated volunteer Holocaust educator. He has been the subject of four films, and his story, Memories in Focus, was published this year by the Azrieli Foundation. Mr. Gutter is one of the first people to be featured in New Dimensions in Testimony, for which his extensive oral history was recorded, where students will be able to interact in a natural way with his hologram and hold “virtual conversations” with him.

“I think of Pinchas Gutter, a man who lived through the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and survived the Majdanek death camp... ‘I tell my story,’ he says, ‘for the purpose of improving humanity, drop by drop by drop. Like a drop of water falls on a stone and erodes it, so, hopefully, by telling my story over and over again, I will achieve the purpose of making the world a better place to live in.’ Those are the words of one survivor – performing that sacred duty of memory - that will echo throughout eternity. Those are good words for all of us to live by.”
- President Barack Obama, Speaking at the USC Shoah Foundation Dinner (2014)

About Dr. Philip Weiss

Dr. Philip Weiss (1922–2008) was an untiring human rights educator and author of Humanity in Doubt (2006). Over two decades, he shared his compelling personal story as a survivor of the Holocaust to tens of thousands of young people. He organized free screenings of the film Schindler’s List for thousands of students, and earned a special citation from the film’s director, Stephen Spielberg. He provided financial support to students participating in the Asper Foundation Holocaust and Human Rights Program, which sends school students to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. He received numerous awards for his contributions to cross-cultural awareness and tolerance. In 2003, he received an honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of Winnipeg.

Humaneness must be the true measure of progress if we are to avoid the tragedies of our past generations. Future societies will demand not only brilliant lawmakers, but creative thinkers and teachers to shape their destiny. Future societies shall achieve peace and order, not through violence, hate, and coercion, but through abolishment of every kind of slavery—whether it be political, economic, or spiritual—through intelligence and respect.
—Dr. Philip Weiss, Address to Graduands (2003)

Pinchas Gutter is the recipient of the 2018
Dr. Philip Weiss Award for Storytelling for Peace and Human Rights.

If you are unable to attend, please consider Supporting a Student to attend the dinner or supporting the Storytelling Festival with a donation. For ticket information or to make a donation, please contact: Jason Brennan, (204) 474-7273, Jason.Brennan@umanitoba.ca